I am quite happy to say I am now a PADI certified open water diver! Karoline, Cathrine and I went through Diver’s Den here in Cairns to get our license and spend a weekend on the reef!
After two long days and many hours in the pool with our instructor Levi, we advanced to the open water part of our dive training! We spent three days on the Great Barrier Reef learning dive skills and practicing safety techniques with Nicola.
We made friends with one of our dive buddies too, her name is Lily! She’s from the Gold Coast area, so we might meet up with her when we go there on our road trip!
Full disclosure, I was terrified of diving in the ocean. A lot more can go wrong than in the pool, and all of our theory lessons on lung overexpansion and decompression sickness really got into my head.
However, it was a lot less scary than I was imagining. On my first real dive, the water was so clear and the coral was so colorful. The number of fish we saw way out on Norman Reef compared to on Fitzroy Island was incredible.
There were hundreds of small colorful fish, but the big ones were my favorite. We had a nice big fish come join us for our first open water lesson, not sure what type it was though.
Over the course of our trip, we dived at five different dive sites all located on Norman Reef: Plate Top, Turtle Bay, Playground, Caves and Sandra’s. They were all incredible, but Plate Top had the best visibility. The best coral, in my opinion, was either at Sandra’s or Turtle Bay.
Since Sandra’s was shallower, it made the coral look more colorful because of the better light source. However, swimming around Turtle Bay gave me chills because the coral was as tall as some buildings. It towered over us probably 12 meters high at least. The corals at Caves were probably around 18 meters tall because they went further down than our dive limit (18 meters) and still nearly reached the surface.
I knew the Great Barrier Reef was famous for a reason, but I had not expected the coral to be so massive. I was completely blown away by its size. It was like a small underwater community with tropical fish of all sizes greeting their neighbors and hitting traffic in the waterways.
It was a little overwhelming to be in such a magnificent place. I’ve wanted to visit the Great Barrier Reef for years, and I finally was able to. It’s heartbreaking to know that it is over 50 percent dead.
The sheer walls of coral make this place look indestructible, but nothing could be further from the truth. Coral is extremely fragile. Rising temperatures cause the water to warm and the coral to bleach. When we were diving, even at night, I was never cold in the water, and we were under for at least 40 minutes at a time.
Another lesser-known cause of coral bleaching is sunscreen. Yup. That’s right, non-organic sunscreen causes corals to have a higher risk of infection which then causes bleaching. Coral that has come in contact with dissolved sunscreen begins to show signs of bleaching after only 18 hours. After four days, the coral is completely bleached.
What’s truly scary is that the chemicals found in dissolved sunscreen are at detectable levels in ocean and freshwater. There is so much sunscreen contaminating the water on an everyday basis that an estimated 10 percent of the world’s corals are at risk of bleaching from sunscreen exposure.
Of course, many people don’t know about sunscreen’s effects on coral. I didn’t know about it until I wrote a research essay on it. Luckily, there are types of sunscreen that don’t affect corals: organic. Who would have guessed? Organic sunscreens don’t use UV filters or harmful chemicals, instead, they use zinc which protects your skin and the corals.
Long story short, use organic sunscreen even if you aren’t swimming near coral reefs. The sunscreen you wear still gets into the groundwater which eventually will make it to the ocean. We are running out of time to save the coral reefs, so being mindful of any effect you may have on them helps.
If you doubt any of the facts I just threw out or if you simply want to know more, check out this journal article from Environmental Health Perspectives: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40040094. The ‘rant’ will never be over, but I’m done talking about it for now.
The marine life on the reef was absolutely incredible! We saw multiple stingrays, reef sharks, crabs, lobsters, plenty of clownfish, anemones, starfish, pufferfish and even giant colorful slugs. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any sea turtles, but there were definitely some in the area that other people spotted. Someone even spotted a three-legged turtle on our first dive.
The reef is teeming with life! It was incredible to swim with the fishes and sharks, and we even got to go on a night dive! That was probably the weirdest feeling I’ve experienced in my whole life. We were swimming in complete darkness. You can’t tell what direction is up because there is no light from the surface.
We had our flashlights around our wrists, but they didn’t give off much light. They were good for pointing at a single thing, but not for lighting up an area. The coolest thing was probably the way different eyes reflect. Predators’ eyes reflect green, so shining your flashlight into the black abyss and having two green eyes staring at you was both cool and chilling.
It was surprisingly easy to avoid coral in the dark, but there were a few times I needed to increase my buoyancy last second to avoid brushing up against some coral. That’s an incredibly important part of diving. If you can’t control your buoyancy you really have no business being in the water. Having control of your body is crucial for protecting the corals from breakages.
The night dive was incredible because we saw the complete reverse of the reef during the day. At night, all the small fish hide in the coral to avoid the nighttime predators. We saw a couple sharks, but mostly giant trevallies. These fish a seriously massive and they will break corals to get at fish.
They have adapted to the divers regularly enjoying a night dive, and they have started using the torchlight to hunt. They follow us divers around and wait for a fish to fall into the beam of light and then they all swarm.
We also were able to do a morning dive before the sun came up. That was incredible too because we got to see the transition between the two sides of the reef. As the predators went to bed, the rest of the reef was waking up. These batfish were probably my favorite because they were so curious and liked to swim right up to your face.
This trip was truly a magical experience and I’m so glad I was able to explore the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, I had to skip the last two dives of the trip due to some ear issues. Equalizing pressure in your ears as you go down can be really difficult, so don’t rush yourself ever.
I may have rushed one too many times, so now I have tearing and blisters on my eardrum. My hearing in my right ear is spotty, but it’s getting better every day. I’m hoping my flight to Uluru tomorrow doesn’t make it worse. Stay tuned for that adventure, I’ll try to be quicker on the post next time. Should be a lot easier now that classes have finished!
kpctravels.com 